HEARING SYSTEM AND METHOD AS WELL AS EAR-LEVEL DEVICE AND CONTROL DEVICE APPLIED THEREIN

摘要

An ear-level hearing device and a hand held computer (e.g., smart phone) with a graphical user interface designed to determine a subject's own hearing threshold, or quietest sound that an individual can hear. Hardware includes the smart phone, the viewing screen of the smart phone, smart phone software, an ear level hearing device, a transmitter on the smart phone and a receiver on the ear level device to provide communication between the graphical user interface on the smart phone to the ear level hearing device. The interface software on the smart phone may consist of an automatic routine or manual touch screen buttons to vary the frequency (psychoacoustic parameter is pitch) and amplitude (psychoacoustic parameter is loudness) of a frequency dependent sound presentation to the earpiece. Software installed on the hand-held smart phone system shall send wireless Bluetooth or other type of wireless signals to the ear level device that shall change the acoustic parameters in the listening device. The firmware/software in the ear level device shall store the frequency/amplitude parameters of the subject's thresholds and then shall wirelessly deliver them back to the smart phone for analysis. The smart phone device then shall use the threshold data to derive the appropriate amplified acoustical signal (relative to the thresholds) to the subject's ear.